Promising yields will weaken, however, if August continues what’s becoming another summer of extremes in central Illinois — this one almost as cool as the summers of 2011-12 were blistering hot.

July ended with an average temperature recorded in Peoria of 72.2 degrees. That’s 3½ degrees below normal, “pretty significant in itself,” said Chris Miller, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lincoln.

The July average was the 10th lowest in Peoria’s records. It would’ve reached the bottom five if a few sun-blocking storms hadn’t skirted just south to bring a cooler degree of separation from other central Illinois areas, Miller said.

Around Bloomington and Champaign, “This will be the coldest or second-coldest July on record,” Miller said.

The previous records came only five years ago. Since then and now, central Illinois and much of the Midwest saw some of their hottest summers ever, said Miller.

“We’ve seen these extremes going on now for the last number of years,” he said.

The erratic patterns, as much as consistently higher temperatures worldwide, add evidence to the theory of climate change, or so-called global warming, Miller said.

The central United States, in fact, is the only area in the world where average temperatures have been below normal since the year’s start. The now-infamous polar vortex phenomenon that brought bitter temperatures to the Midwest last winter began that trend.

Elsewhere, “For at least the past seven months, the whole globe has been warmer than normal,” Miller said.

Blame for this area’s cool summer falls not on last winter’s frigid weather patterns, but on a summertime low pressure system that typically moves from Canada into the north Atlantic Ocean, Miller said.

Area farmers would rather not hear his prediction that August likely will see the pattern continue.

An “excellent” crop season so far now needs hotter, wetter weather to finish strong, said Godke.

The soul-chilling winter also froze the soil deep enough to kill many insects — including much of this season’s Japanese beetles — as they slept in larvae stage, said Ken Johnson of the University of Illinois Extension Service in Jacksonville.

That saved corn from damage as it thrived in June’s drenching rains — at 9.7 inches, well above twice the month’s average — and July’s temperate heat.

“Corn needs a certain amount of heat to develop its kernels,” however, and soybeans need both heat and rain in August, Godke said.

Miller doesn’t expect much of either.

As for the coming winter, “That remains to be seen,” he said, but past trends show milder winters follow cooler summers.

Then again, as legendary songwriter Bob Dylan wrote, “A change in the weather is known to be extreme.”